Almost 10,000 Telstra Customer Records Found Online In Yet Another Privacy Breach

Despite Telstra CEO David Thodey’s assurances to the contrary, the telco isn’t great at keeping customer data safe as houses in the last few years. It has been uncovered today that one of Telstra’s third-party contractors let slip a few Excel spreadsheets containing nearly 10,000 customer records. Here we go again.

Fairfax has been tipped off by a reader who found his information, along with the information of thousands of other Telstra customers, inside a spreadsheet indexed by Google.

Several spreadsheets were discovered online, revealing customer names, business names, phone numbers and even addresses in extreme cases

Telstra has apologised saying that the data in some cases is up to six years old, but that’s still no excuse for the breach.

It’s currently investigating how a third-party contractor got hold of the information and what it was doing outside of the corporate firewall. Going for a stroll, presumably. [SMH]

this data could have been compiled by an agent of Telstra, not Telstra themselves. In other words, It might not have actually come 'from' Telstra at all. At the end of the day, no matter who's stuff up, Its Telstra responsibility regardless.

Despite not being the first time, Telstra has been given favourable treatment by authorities. It has never being fined nor sanctioned for any of the privacy breached. The law treats Telstra one way and treats others another way.

When I was a kid in business, the big worry was how to keep the customer records safe. Never let anyone not proven of trust get near them. Field staff had a query, they rang Accounts.
I'm mortified that even my local Bank lets young staff wander around with wide-open Notebooks and astonishing access to customer records.
I'm glad I'm fabulously rich and retired.....